HATEFUL CHARACTER OF A SPY. 3 amination, should any be attempted; the description never arrived, or arrived too late, and I ascended my chaise, as ignorant of Baltimore as of the Peruvian Potosi, trusting to that good chance which has often favoured me, and under the guidance of which "In my school days, when I had lost one shaft, ،، The self same way, with more advised watch, Merchant of Venice, Act I. Sc. 1. The stratagem, if not perfectly blameless, was at least intended to be an inoffensive one; I had no hopes of a peace, and consequently none of seeing Holland in a more regular mode. I went not to investigate the nakedness of the land, and by availing myself of its confidence to penetrate the military depôts, the docks and arsenals of a country not in amity with my own. I abhor the character of a spy, moving in a friendly garb, however useful his treachery may be to his employers. My imposition extended no farther than to enable me to make a picturesque tour through an almost aqueous kingdom, to view its natives in their ordinary habits, to glide upon their liquid roads, to saunter in their green avenues and flourishing gardens, and trace the wonderful results of that daring and indefatigable ingenuity, which has raised the permanent habitation of man in the ocean, and made successful inroads upon the physical order of the universe. But though the deception gave no pang to my conscience, yet, harmless as it was, (and let me mention it as a moral lesson) it did not escape the lash of many a petty inconvenience. Often have I been pestered upon the supposition of my being an American merchant, with interrogations as to the number of partners I had, how many clerks I kept, and the many other perplexing queries of minds at once devoted to commerce, and curiosity: nor did I escape dilemmas infinitely more perilous. Having thus in all candour confessed my offence, if such it ought in justice to be called, and which has also met with its due proportion of chastisement, I trust I shall receive absolution from my reader; and in that hope I shall now proceed to my narrative. I intended to have availed myself, as I wish I had done on former occasions, of the indulgence usually allowed to tours given in the shape of epistolary correspondence, the A ROYAL DESCRIPTION. 5. ease and familiarity of which render the tourist less formal, and the critic more indulgent; but the war presented an obstacle to the adoption of a plan which would have been more congenial to my mind, and to the nature of the remarks I have to offer. In company with two highly esteemed friends, I proceeded to Gravesend : upon the road, we were charmed, by occasional views of the majestic Thames, formed by a rich setting sun into the appearance of an inverted sky, decorated by ships more supported over than upon its bosom, and a vast expanse of richly cultivated land fading in the mist of a far distant horizon. Of the country which I was quitting, and of that to which I was proceeding, our Charles the Second, a monarch of whom Sir Richard Bulstrode justly says, that had he loved business as well as he understood it, he would have been the greatest prince in Europe, observed, "that the "former was the most comfortable climate to live under, "he had ever experienced; as there were more days in "the year, and more hours in the day, that a man could "take exercise out of doors in it, than in any country he "had ever known. That during his exile he had seen 66 many countries, of which none pleased him so much as "the Flemings, who were the most honest and true-heart "ed people he had ever met with; and added very pro phetically to me, to whom he addressed these remarks, "I am weary of travelling, I am resolved to go abroad no more; but when I am dead and gone, I know not "what my brother will do, I am much afraid that when "he comes to the throne he will be obliged to travel again.” A prediction fatally realized by the wicked folly of the royal object of it. At Gravesend we paid six guineas apiece to a Dutch captain, and a little favourable breeze springing up, we proceeded on board with a large party composed of specimens of the human race from various parts of the globeproceeding, through the indulgence of the government of Holland, to their various destinations on the continent. The moment we stepped on board we found we were victims to the most infamous imposition. Six guineas for a birth in a vessel, which Noah in the first rudiments of his art, would have made a thousand times more commodious! Figure to yourself about forty persons stowed in a Dutch galliot of about one hundred tons burthen, deeply laden with a cargo of chalk, &c. a hold near the bows covered with straw for the accommodation of thirty-six of the passengers; a low miserable cabin, four feet high on the deck, which formed the honey-moon bower of a young Swiss, and a pretty English CALVIN AND SERVETUS. in 7 girl just married; and a little hole astern which, furnished with a couple of tickings crammed with Dutch peas stead of feathers, constituted the vestibule, drawing-room and chamber, for me and one of my companions. Hoping for a speedy termination to our marine miseries, we set sail and slowly creeped down the Thames by the aid of a scanty breeze, which dying before we had advanced two miles, left us as a legacy to the tardy tides. Indeed, we almost tided it over to Holland, in the achievement of which we were six long days and nights; but then the days were serene and warm, and the nights were adorned by a brilliant moon, and the blue vault of Heaven was spangled over with stars. Our captain and his crew exhibited twice a day that attention to their devotions, which is still so characteristic of their country, in spite of every hostile attack and insidious intrigue of France, in the most vulgar, impious, and savage era of her bloody revolution. The breakfast of every morning, and the supper of every evening, were consecrated by a long shrill anthem, and still longer prayer. The cook was the chaplain, and the kitchen, a hole of about eight feet by five, the chapel. The spirit of Calvin, if it be not offered up to the manes of Servetus, must have smiled with satisfaction, at the |